


born from blood and snow

by arabellagaleotti



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Natasha Romanov, F/M, Gen, Language Kink, Military, Origin Story, Red Room (Marvel), Riding, Russian Bucky Barnes, Russian Natasha Romanov, SHIELD, Sex, Vaginal Sex, Women in the Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 12:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21457843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabellagaleotti/pseuds/arabellagaleotti
Summary: “Bucky,” she says, and he turns to see her, bathed in the moonlight from the window.“Don’t call me that.”“Soldat,” she says, instead, and steps towards him.“Natalia,” he says back. “Widow.”OR,A story about finding yourself, and love, while you're at it.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Madame B. & Natasha Romanov, Peggy Carter & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

  
  


She doesn't remember her childhood before the Red Room. There’s a few scattered memories like burned photographs inside her consciousness, but nothing else. Fluorescent lighting and her father’s face, hazy lights through a frosted window. 

What she does remember is ballet. Shoes, ribbons, leotards and Madame B’s harsh voice. Her training, splinters biting into her palms and knees, actions that become reflexes. She remembers the cold of the handcuffs around her wrist at night. She remembers smoking her first cigarette, from a pack the other girls had snuck in from a mission. It burnt, choking her form the inside out. She other things, too. Better things. She remembers her best friend,giggling in the dark. She remembers the snap of her neck under her hands. 

Then, when she's somewhere between woman and child, she tries to run away in Prague after a mission. After that, she doesn't remember anything but metal clamping around her head and electricity screaming down her spine. 

Gunpowder, blood, screaming, thick, oily smoke scarring the sky. That's what makes it though. War. Death. Absolution. That's her backstory now. 

She remembers Soldat, too. Her partner, sometimes. She thinks she loved him at night, when they were together in a creaky hotel room and their handlers had left the room. 

They curled around each other like shadows and whisper languages they both know. One day Natalia murmurs a word of English and Soldat lets a stream of fluid syllables out of his mouth. Natalia freezes, and lifts herself up to look at him. He stares back, and speaks in English again.

“Sorry,” he says, and has an accent.

“Shush,” Natalia tells him in Russian, and the handler comes back in from the ice machine. 

\--

She comes back to herself sometime later, when she looks older and her hair is longer, down to her waist. Has she ever cut it? Is that with her lost memories, the snip of the scissors, her head lightening?

When she is meant to be taking a shower after a mission, she strips and stares at herself in the mirror. Twisting this way and that, she supposes she is attractive. That must be why she’s such a good soldier. 

Long, lean pale skin, red hair, green eyes. She leans closer and peers into her face.

Her handler knocks on the door and yells for her to hurry up. Natalia sticks her head under the water and wraps a towel around herself.

“Coming,” she says and leaves another longing glance at herself. 

...

She’s gone many places, more than most, she supposes. She’s been to all of Europe, Morocco, Japan, Australia, South Africa. She’s never been to America. She’d like to go one day. She still remember's Soldat’s accent, rough, round. 

\--

She wonders more now. She probably shouldn't but she still does.

“Where did you take me from?” she asks Madame one day. They’re in the classroom, it’s late. This classroom used to be filled with her peers. All those girls are dead now.

Madame cocks her head. “Take you from?”

“Who is my family, where was I born, how did you get me?” she lists, and hopes she won’t be killed for asking these things. 

“All that doesn't matter, Natalia,” Madame tells her. “You should sleep. It’s late.”

It’s time she finds out who she is. 

...

She gets ready to leave like she would any other day. They've given her her own room, although it is bugged to high heavens. She slips on her civilian clothes like she would normally wear and ties a scarf over her hair. 

She breaks out not in the middle of the night, but late summer afternoon where the light is failing fast but it’s not overly suspicious for her to be out and about. She tips her head at every guard she walks past and keeps an even pace. _ I am not running away. I am not running away, _ she repeats to herself, _ I am just taking a stroll. _

She keeps that up until reaching the barbed-wire fence that circles the facility. She winks at the security camera and slips mini bolt cutters out of her pocket. She still has three minutes and twenty-two seconds until the guards come around again. She cuts the fence and slips under.

Natalia hikes through the forest then walks along the path to the nearest town. They will be after her soon, if not right now. 

“Need a ride?” a rough voice calls out to her. It’s a farmer, in a beat-up, mud splattered pickup truck. 

“Yes, sir,” she says, and climbs into the passenger side of his car. She braces her arm on the open window and smiles at herself in the side-window. 

From there, it’s easy. A few trains, some help from strangers, and within a week she is in Moscow. 

The first thing she does is go to the Russian State Library. “Can I help you?” a voice asks. It’s a librarian with mousy hair scraped into a bun and glasses perched on her nose. 

She opens her mouth, and remembers to speak Pусский. “Yes. Do you have any records?”

“A few old ones from years ago.”

“Can I see them?”

...

She spends the entire day in those archives, inhaling books and dust with every noseful. 

She knows her name is Romanoff. Or at least that's what they called her. So, she starts with that. 213 Romanoffs in the history of Russia. 

It’s a day and a half until she finds him. Ivan Romanoff.

A name. That's it. No marriage records, no parents, children. He was born the right time. There's not a death listed. 

She spends the rest of the day asking around about Ivan Romanoff. It turns out, from a gossipy teenager that looks up from her flip phone and blows a pink bubble with her gum, that he was an enemy of the state. She gets from a man in an alley that deals in information, he was killed in 1941. She gets more over the next day, and the one after that. Finally, she knows all of it. 

Ivan Romanoff, born in 1908. From Moscow, he was a home-grown political activist that fought communism. In 1939, he was jailed without trial and executed in 1941. His family was all killed. He had a wife, Maria. And a daughter. 

That’s who she is. 

The daughter of a dead man.


	2. Chapter 2

She’s sleeping at a local homeless shelter. When she gets back, a woman tells her that there were men looking for her. Natalia steps inside and grabs her things. They are looking for her, of course they are. 

She has to leave Russia. The thought strikes her cold. Where shall she go?

Greece, France, Vietnam?

No.

_ America _.

An hour later, she’s on a train to Kazakhstan. She makes it through the border easily enough, by hiding her face and pretending to throw up in the bathroom. The young soldier, easily bored, doesn't bother to question her, and so she rattles on out of Russia. 

From there, she makes her way across Central Asia and then into Turkey. Onwards, she catches a ferry to Athens. From there, she catches a commercial plane with papers she got from a friend in Uzbekistan. It's the spy work they'd trained her for. Not working out so well for them now.

...

She lands in Florida fifteen hours later. She hails a cab from the airport and forgets that she is in the Land of Opportunity for a moment.

“Where to, love?” the gruff cab driver asks from behind the plexiglass.

_ “Здравствуйте, я бы хотел -” _she cuts herself off, and the cab driver raises his eyebrows from the sweaty little front seat he’s crammed himself into. “Where’s your nearest, cheapest hotel?” she asks finally, and smiles brilliantly. 

The dump he drops her off at is a slightly shady, slightly seedy little place. The room she is given smells like cigarette smoke and has some suspicious mold in the bathroom. 

Still, it’s accommodation. She’s been in worse. She stays there for a week or so, spends all day every day on the beach, in the water after she buys a swimsuit. 

After she wears the same clothes for three days, she decides that maybe she should get some new ones. 

So she goes shopping. Her training calls for a mall, a shopping center, something to help her blend in. But she’s tired of that now. She wants to be herself, not just another girl. So she walks into town and comes across her first thrift shop in 20 minutes. 

She doesn't really know what she likes. So she tires on everything, much to the woman working at the counter’s puzzlement. Shirts, pants, shorts, skirts, jumpsuits, a few Halloween costumes.

By the end, she’s got some new headscarves, a few men’s shirts, faded graphic tees and three pairs of pants, and the crowning glory -- one summery-yellow skirt that flares out from her waist and reaches in knees in layers of shimmery fabric. She pays with cash and it takes three shopping bags to carry all of her things. She gets back to her room and tries on everything. 

She’s getting changed again when she catches it. Her face, the skin over her nose, once pale and flawless, is now littered with little brown freckles. She’s not perfect anymore, a doll anymore. Now, if Russia catches her, they won’t want her. They’ll kill her, not make her forget. The thought makes her delirious. Her contract is broken, she can be whoever she wants. 

She can be Natalia, or Natasha or Widow. All those names are played out. 

She wants to be someone else. She wants to be Nat, and wear all of these things, and more, and her yellow skirt and she wants to be happy. Just happy.

But Florida doesn't fit her, not really. 

So she goes back to that airport and, after staring at the departures board for a long time, flies to LAX that evening. LA is more her home. It’s the City of Reinvention. She wants to reinvent herself. 

She’s walking past a coffee shop when the door opens and a gust of steam and arabica hits her face. She pivots on her toes and steps inside. The menu is so big. There’s so many new words. Mocha, latte, cappuccino, _ americano_. 

Americano. She is American now. 

She visits the coffee shop everyday, figures out what all those drinks mean. The waitresses learn her name and she learns theirs. 

She does make friends. Like Katherine. Katherine is a struggling actress/waitress who works at said coffeeshop. After she’s at the coffeehouse three times in one day, one of them finally snaps. 

“What's your deal?” she asks, almost rudely, definitely out of the blue. Nat looks her up and down, examines her like Natalia would. Red lipstick, dark hair mussed, fishnets under her high-hemmed skirt. Rebellious, probably angry at someone or something. Probably from a small, suffocating town that shes escaped from to big-city LA.

Nat blinks, “I like coffee.”

“Yeah, but this isn't even good coffee.”

“I like it,” she shrugs. 

She narrows her eyes, and leans forward. “Who are you?”

She thinks of her headscarves, and linen shirts that wrinkle too easy, and answers, “I’m Nat.”

Katherine leans back. “I’m Katherine.” Her plastic name card displays it already, but she doesn't care.

She can be a little harsh sometimes, a bit of a bitch but Nat is not one to talk. She’s fun, though, and heartfelt, when she wants to be. She can start a party anywhere. And does, frequently. And so Nat gets dragged along to these raves and ragers and parties, and doesn't enjoy them as much as she enjoys leaving them, Katherine’s arm around her and the fresh night air cold in her lungs, giggling at some joke, calling a cab. 

She realises that Katherine is her best friend. She hasn't had a best friend since....has she ever had a best friend?


	3. Chapter 3

  
“Natalia Romanoff?” 

Natasha looks up from her coffee and newspaper. There's a woman in front of her, hair twisted behind her head elegantly, red lips quirking into a smile, and kind eyes with crow’s feet looking down at her.

“My name is Peggy Carter. I’m from SHIELD, you’re from the KGB. Let’s talk.”

Natalia laughs a little and gets up, she is careful to keep her voice clean of any Russian accent, “I’m sorry, I think you have me confused.” She is Americano Nat now. She grabs her purse and snatches her newspaper, starts to leave. Peggy Carter reaches an arm out to stop her, and as her jacket opens, Natalia sees the handle of a gun. “Sit down, duckie,” she says, and pulls out a chair. 

...

The next week she's in SHIELD basic training. As she’s pulling herself up a rope, she realises it’s time for a change. Nat wouldn't ever join the military, but Natasha would. 

So, she becomes Natasha. Her comrades are nice enough, mostly men, except for a tall, brutish brunette who doesn't care for her much. She makes jokes with the guys, but in the end she’s just alone. Like always. 

Her comrades all go out to a bar, she goes along. Apparently, when she gets really drunk, she gets Russian. Toasting nostrovia, accent, heartfelt statements about the motherland, all of it. Katherine would laugh at her, but she wouldn't mind it. They'd sling their arms around each other's shoulders and sing along to the anthem. 

The next morning, her teammates tease her endlessly. Until she makes them stop. She steps up to main douche’s face and punches him in the throat. He lays on the ground, choking, and Natasha realises what she’s done. 

“Air,” she pants. “I need air.” She runs, out of the barracks and out a back door and gasps for breath. The sky is brilliantly blue, eggshell blue. 

“Are you really Russian?” a voice asks. Natasha turns her head. It’s her other female teammate, the brunette.

“I…” she shrugs. “I guess I used to be.”

She nods, and Natasha nods, and they stare out into the sky together. 

...

Madame did something to her after the chair. She’s suspected for a long time, but after she beat everyone else in her training squad by a full 20 minutes on the 10 mile run, she concludes that maybe she should face facts. 

So she goes to Peggy, tells her. Peggy has her blood taken and analyzed, and three days later she finds out she’s a (weak) super soldier. 

\--

“Do you know anything about Russia?” Peggy asks her at lunch one day. 

Natasha puts down her fork. “Like what?”

“Facilities, handlers, locations, plans, other...militants.” Peggy takes a sip of her white wine. 

Natasha looks around the nice, mid-range restaurant Peggy has brought her to. You want to know about the Soldat?”

Peggy’s eyes spark. “Yes.”

Natasha leans back. “I don’t know anything.” Is this all she’s worth to Peggy? A source to tap. 

“Natasha.”

She shrugs takes another bite of her salad. “He’s a ghost. I know as much as you, maybe less.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Natasha plays dead. 

“You’ve been on several missions with him. And that's just what we know about.”

She swallows. “Fine. Soldat is a robot. He’s just a shell. He just does his programmed moves and nothing else.”

“We have found a report that shows you were...close.”

Ah. A handler must have suspected something. “I don't know what that’s about, but I did like him. He was friendly.”

“Did he seem….American?”

Natasha freezes. This is the information she is looking for. What she answers now might change everything. She could be pulled in and integrated here to Monday three weeks from now. She’s not risking that. “No. He speaks Russian, he acts Russian. He is Russian. Nothing else.”

Peggy leans back, drinks her wine. 

\--

She graduates her training with honours. People scorn her, says she only did so well because of what's in her blood. 

Maybe its true, maybe its not, but either way she's better than all of the. Anyway, she doesn't listen, and goes on her very first mission three days later.

She does well as a SHIELD agent, not quite as well as a KGB agent. In Russia, no one cared if you got a little too bloody, in fact, it was encouraged. 

Here, you can be called into counselling and HR if you beat someone’s face in. Someone should have warned her. 


	4. Chapter 4

...

Fury sends her a file.

It’s Steve Rogers. 

Information on him, his habits, his history, preferences, medical etcetera, etcetera. It’s a lot, actually. She reads it all, twice, then storms to Nick’s office and slams it down. 

“What the fuck,” she says.

“Hello, Natasha,” he says sarcastically. “I’m good, thanks, you?” Yeah, she loves this friendly new boss dynamic. Back home, they wouldn't even try. 

“What have you given me this?” she demands. 

He smiles. “Because of the Avengers Initiative.”

…

She’s apart of a team again. This is bound to end badly.

She doesn't mind it too much, she finds. It's like a puzzle, working out each different person. 

Tony's...he's complicated, more than people think. They're alike, very alike. He doesn't understand people either, she can see it in his eyes when Steve get's angry. He likes to push and pull because he forgets people are machines, and you can't recalibrate them when they don't work. 

Clint's loud and funny and goofy, but he's good at what he does. He could shoot though a wedding ring. Natasha's read his flies, been on joint missions with him.

Bruce is anxious most of the time, but he's smart, and a good resource. Natasha likes him, anyway. He makes good tea. 

Thor's just a big galactic puppy dog. Enough said. 

Steve. Steve's stuck in the past. He's just trying to catch up and protect everyone and be the leader at the same time. Half of him is missing. 

…

  
  


Bucky Barnes is alive, Soldat is alive. Or at least Steve thinks he is. They go on a few missions, without anyone knowing. She doesn't mention anything about him, and Steve never connects the dots between her and him. 

Steve brings him home, and she nearly faints when she sees him again. He looks up, and their eyes meet, and this is the Soldat she knows. 

A less senseless version of herself would cry out, would go to him. No. This may be the same Soldat but she is far, far different. 

So she doesn't say anything. Neither does he.

They run away after that fight at the German airport and land in Wakanda. They stay there for months, and slowly, she watches Soldat become Bucky again. That accent, his rough New York accent comes back, and it’s in every word now. 

She finally gets sick of waiting, and so, inside their little home inside the royal court, she goes to him. 

She hears the slight shuffle of his feet, the shift in air pressure as walks past her cracked-open door towards the kitchen. 

She checks herself over in the mirror before going after him. Red lips, dark eyes, hair sprung and curling around her shoulders. She’s not Nat, or Natasha, or Natalie or Widow now, she’s someone else. Someone he would love even if he had other options. 

She slips out the door and towards the kitchen. He’s at the sink, getting water. 

“Bucky,” she says, and he turns, sees her, bathed in the light from the window, lit in moonlight.

“Don’t call me that.” 

“Soldat,” she says, instead, and steps towards him.

“Natalia,” he says back. “Widow.”

“I’ve missed you,” she says in Spanish, then Italian, “you don't know how much.” she gets close enough to touch him, and does, reaches out with one hand and traces the corner of his mouth with her fingers. 

“I do,” he replies in Mandarin. “Because I did too.”

  
  


...

  
  


They meet at night in her room or his, lie in bed, legs tangled together like shoelaces. They don’t fuck, but she thinks that this must be just as intimate. 

“Do you ever want to go there again?” she whispers in the night. 

“Russia?” he asks. She wants to say _home._

“Yes,” she says in German. Is there anywhere else when it comes to them?

He slips past the question, “Do you?”

She hesitates, “it was ...simpler, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” he agrees in Japanese, “you were told what, when and how. Draw inside the lines. That’s it.” he says in three different languages. 

“Not just that,” she murmurs in Arabic, “the violence, the fight, it used to give me a buzz. Killing. Now it's all humane.”

He looks over other with dark eyes, and doesn't answer. 

…

She meets him just by coincidence in the kitchen one night.

He’s standing in the light of the fridge, rummaging inside, and it takes all the breath out of her for a moment. She loves him. She absolutely does. These moments, they’ve had together? Their history? It’s all climaxed into something she cannot control. He draws back, holding a jar of pickles, and sees her. “Hey,” his face splits into a wide smile, “what are you doing up?”

“I love you, Bucky Barnes,” she said in English, the words spill from her mouth uncontrollably, and he puts the pickles down. 

Then he smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners, then gathers her in his big arms and kisses her, long and deep.

“I love you, Natalia Romanoff,” he whispers in his Russian accent.

“Bucky?” someone asks from the doorway, and she slips out of his arms and dances away across the dark kitchen tiles. It’s Steve, she can see now in the moonlight. “Why are you awake?” he rubs his eyes then goes to flick on the lights. 

“Just getting some water,” Natasha answers for him, holding a glass. 

Steve nearly jumped out of his skin. “Nat! I didn't see you.”

“No one does,” she answers honestly and turns on the tap.

“What were you talking about?” Steve asks, just on the edge of suspicious. 

“Nothing really; plans for tomorrow,” she lies, and truly remembers Natalia for the first time in a long time. “Speaking of, I want to get to sleep,” she stalks towards the door, swaying her hips just a little as she passes Bucky. 

“Goodnight,” Bucky says in Bengali, Natasha freezes, then turns, and meets his guilty eyes and Steve’s confused ones. 

“_Прощай_,” she calls across the kitchen and darts away, laughing. 

“What was that about?” Steve asks Bucky.

“Nothing,” he lies, but smiles after her. “Just a thing we have.”

...

The others don't know. Nobody knows except maybe Fury, and Peggy must have. She must have.

Thanos happens. It flings everybody back together again. It doesn't end well, as you might have predicted. Tony will still help. Steve will still comply. 

At night, she still sleeps with Bucky -- Soldat, whoever he is now. Natasha gets confused. She wonders if they should tell the others.

"Why?" he asks when she voices it one night. 

She blinks. "So they know. So it's not so devastating when they find out."

He shifts, turning and pinning him under her weight. She can feel him growing hard. "Who says they will find out? We are spies."

Her hands are quick, shimmying underwear down her legs, pulling his down. "People always find out, Bucky, don't you agree?"

"Not always."

"It'll be easier. We can touch in public."

_"We can_ touch in public," he says, and unbuttons her sleep shirt. 

She smiles wickedly, "not like I want us too," and she flips them over, sinking down on him. 

"It won't be easier. We'll have to explain so much," he says, grabbing handfuls of her ass.

"Who cares, we don't answer them normally. Why is this different?" she argues.

She starts to rock her hips, and he groans. 

"They'll know to help when one of us dies."

"We're going to die?" he asks, and she can hear the cockiness in his voice. 

She shrugs, and moves faster. "Statistically, yes. It's a miracle it's been so long."

"Good to know you have faith in our abilities."

She laughs. "C'mon, Bucky. Lets tell people."

He sighs, hand moving to her waist, and then her heart. "Okay. Just...not right now. It's too much. Scott's making the suits, and --"

"I know. I know. Later. When everything's calm again."

...

She’d like to restart, she thinks on that deadly, terrible fall. They’re saving the world, or might, and she should probably think about that. But rather, as time slows down, and the ice-cold wind whips at her, she considers how she’d like to live it all again, if she could. 

She’d like to be born to a normal father, not a dead one, not one that was executed by the cold barrel of a gun to his forehead. She’d still like to grow up in Russia, and learn ballet, and a dozen languages, just not while sleeping with a handcuff on her wrist. She’d like to move to Florida and LA, but not because she has to flee a repressive government. And maybe she’d work for the government, in this life, but not in a clandestine agency as a spy. She’d like to know everyone in the Avengers but she wouldn't want it to end like it did. 

She would still love coffee, and Katherine, and everything she does love in this life. Like Bucky. In this life, and the next, and any one after that. She’d _ lo amo _ him and _ 爱他 _ and _ Liebe ihn _ and _ أحبه _ and _ любить его. _

Forever. 


End file.
